[OFP] Expected by NightJay0044

Review by Sui

Overview

Standard picture and text, though the picture seemed a bit stretched and had no border. More descriptive text would have been nice, and helped fill in a bit of background on the mission.

Intro

The opening scene involved a gentle camera movement down the main street of town. The first thought that occurred to me was that it was a good camera angle to start an Intro. However the angle doesn't change, and not much else happens... This seems to be a bit of a space filler, an intro simply so the mission could have an intro. It would have been nice if something noteworthy had occurred during the flyby, or the Intro had been more related to the mission (apart from just 'showing' the town the first objective is in).

Briefing

'BIS style' is how I would describe the briefing. It's short, with very little background. There isn't all that much to get the player emotionally invested in the mission outcome. The player also starts assigned no equipment what-so-ever. This is not a good move in my opinion, as it means the player has to manually select their gear every time they want to play. I know I often like the challenge of playing the mission with the default gear the designer assigns, but I guess that wouldn't be a very smart option here.

The author used a good technique to ensure a bit of replayability. They offered two 'plans' to choose from. However rather than enabling the player to accomplish the same mission two different ways, it seemed to choose two completely different missions. A good idea, but unfortunately it was executed a bit unbelievably.

Mission

The mission starts with the player skulking around in a forest. Here they are presented with the two plans to choose from. The first plan involves destroying some Vulcan AAA, the second assassinating an officer. The second plan gives a battleship off the coast orders to fire on the vulcans, and made me wonder why I had even tried plan A in the first place. I wondered why HQ hadn't tasked the Battleship with the destruction of the AAA, and inserted me further up to coast so I wouldn't have to walk too far to find and kill the enemy officer! I think the two plans were a very good idea to ensure replayability, but they should have related to two different methods to accomplish the same mission rather than two separate missions all together.

Plan A involves the player destroying the AAA, and then clearing the town of enemy infantry. This wouldn't have been too difficult if it wasn't for a well placed para-drop. I got surprised a couple of time by roving infantry patrols, intelligently set up to move around the perimeter of the town I was clearing.

Plan B involved the battleship destroying the main objective (The Vulcan AAA), and the player humping north a few klicks to assassinate an enemy officer. This wasn't too difficult, as there wasn't very much infantry to avoid. The minefield was a good idea to keep the player in the operations area, but unfortunately the hint popped up every 2 seconds or so. That sounds gets on my nerves at the best of times, but every 2 seconds is a bit much.

Both missions saw an enemy helicopter come after me after the first objective. While good to create that 'hunted' feeling, the helicopter kept flying exactly over my position. Yet it obviously didn't see me as it didn't fire. I think more randomness in its search pattern would have made that a little more believable.

Overall

(Review Date: Dec 2004) This mission would have been a great co-op. A whole squad inserted to do the job would have been very believable and much more entertaining. As it is, the 'one man vs. the world' scenario here doesn't quite seem believable. The player ends up doing everything (much like John Rambo) and in my humble opinion, spoils the credibility of the mission premise. Still, many people like Rambo missions so if you're in that category this one is for you.